Editing Mental image (section)

==Mind's eye==
The notion of a "mind's eye" goes back at least to [[Cicero]]'s reference to '''''mentis oculi''''' during his discussion of the orator's appropriate use of [[simile]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XCU9AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA535 |title=Cicero, ''De Oratore'', Liber III: XLI: 163. |access-date=2018-03-23 |archive-date=2022-12-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221206153025/https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XCU9AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA535 |url-status=live |last1=Cicero |first1=Marcus Tullius |year=1840 }}</ref>

In this discussion, Cicero observed that allusions to "the [[Gulf of Gabès|Syrtis]] of his patrimony" and "the [[Charybdis]] of his possessions" involved similes that were "too far-fetched"; and he advised the orator to, instead, just speak of "the rock" and "the gulf" (respectively)—on the grounds that "the eyes of the mind are more easily directed to those objects which we have seen, than to those which we have only heard".<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/ciceroonoratorya00ciceuoft#page/239/mode/1upWatson, J.S. (trans. and ed.), ''Cicero on Oratory and Orators'', Harper & Brothers, (New York), 1875:  Book III, C.XLI, p. 239.]</ref>

The concept of "the mind's eye" first appeared in English in [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer's]] (c. 1387) [[The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale|Man of Law's Tale]] in his ''[[The Canterbury Tales|Canterbury Tales]]'', where he tells us that one of the three men dwelling in a castle was blind, and could only see with "the eyes of his mind"; namely, those eyes "with which all men see after they have become blind".<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/canterburyprol00chauuoft#page/78/mode/1up ''The Man of Laws Tale'', lines 550–553.]</ref> <!--This is absolutely wrong. The OED lists three uses (1435, 1450, 1577) before Shakespeare's use          The phrase remained rarely used and the OED incorrectly ascribes it to Shakespeare,{{cn|date=June 2019}} as the first time the literally introspective phrase 'the mind's eye' is used in English was in Hamlet. \ As an example of introspection, it demonstrates that the internal life of the mind rarely came into focus in literature until the introspective realism movement in the 19th century.-->